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Knee stabilizer in brief / WED 2-8-23 / with or without the shaded letter / Brand for which Garfield was once a spokescat / Streaming hiccups / Fruit of the Loom product featuring superhero themes / Grissom longtime CSI character / Ones ranking below cpls
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Constructor: Chase Dittrich
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- GOAT MILK (17A: Alternative to 2% ... with or without the shaded letter)
- FACE CARD (31A: It may be half of a blackjack ... with or without the shaded letter)
- EMOTIONS (45A: Things that might be raised in court ... with or without the shaded letter)
- PLAYOFFS (62A: They might eliminate teams ... with or without the shaded letter)
William Theodore Walton III (born November 5, 1952) is an American television sportscaster and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for coach John Wooden and the UCLA Bruins, winning three consecutive national college player of the year awards (1972–1974), while leading UCLA to NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973 and an 88-game winning streak. After being selected as the first overall pick in the 1974 NBA draft, Walton led the Portland Trail Blazers to an NBA championship in 1977, earning the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award that season. He won another NBA title in 1986 as a member of the Boston Celtics. Walton was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993. He was named to the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams. [...] After retiring from the NBA, Walton overcame stuttering and embarked on a second career as a sportscaster, working both as a studio analyst and color commentator, mostly for ESPN, with stints for several other networks and teams. He earned an Emmy Award in 1991. Walton is a noted fan of the Grateful Dead, as a self-described "Deadhead", and often mentions them in his broadcasts. He has hosted several podcasts and satellite radio programs featuring the music of the Grateful Dead. (wikipedia)
• • •
Maybe if these "shaded squares" had spelled something, I could've seen the point, but they don't, so I don't. Is "GFEP" something? I pray not. I guess the cluing is kind of inventive at times (with the last two themers, specifically), but the first themer clue involves no effort at all (two kinds of milk, shrug, OK), and I'd say the same about the second themer clue as well ... and throw in the fact that ACE CARD just sounds stupid. Do you really not just call it an "ace"? I thought "lingo" was supposed to abbreviate, clarify, shorten. ACE CARD does none of those things. Of course it's an ACE CARD, we're playing blackjack, what was it going to be, an ACE VASE? An ACE DUNE BUGGY? There's just a so-what quality to the whole theme, and the puzzle seems to know it and is trying real hard to distract you from it with a barrage of long Downs that just scream "look at me! pay no attention to the SO-SO theme!" BUTT DIAL, JAW-DROPPING, "I MEAN COME ON!" and UNDEROOS completely upstage the theme answers as a set. I want them to be the theme. $20 to anyone who can find a theme in BUTT DIAL / JAW-DROPPING / "I MEAN COME ON!" / UNDEROOS, I'm serious.
The lovely set of long Downs were unfortunately offset by a deluge of olden stuff that comes at you right out of the gate. Once again, I stopped and screenshotted the NW corner before I ever left it, so ill-omen-y did it seem.
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81 comments:
I liked the theme a lot more than @Rex did. Agree with Easy-Medium difficulty.
elmo before BERT for the singing Muppet at 12D (when was the last time we had a non-ELMO four-letter Muppet?), TryING before TAXING for "Wearisome" at 46D, and did NOT before ARE NOT for the playground retort at 37D.
“So it seems I have adopted a terrorist and a con artist.” Great line. I look forward to more tales of terrorist felinery.
So at first I was crestfallen that the four optional letters didn’t spell anything, but the more I thought about it, the happier I was with this trick. It’s pretty cool that Chase found symmetrical phrases that could be clued the same way with/without the initial letter. I mean, there are probably a lot of phrases that could morph into another phrase without the initial letter – gold record/old record, but not ones that could still be clued the same way. So, yay you, Chase.
My Bravo tv viewing reached a new low with Winter House, wherein there was a girl whose job was to sell real estate in the METAverse. I briefly investigated and understood absolutely nothing. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency were thrown around, so. . . crap. My mind just doesn’t bend that way.
NUDE feels like a weird description of someone streaking. If you’re posing for an art class, sure, you’re NUDE. But if you’re running around first in front of a crowd and then away from the police, you’re nekkid.
I love “Take me AS I AM.” Here’s the thing – don’t a lot of us go to a great deal of trouble to present as people we really aren’t? How could someone take me as I am when we never let anyone really know who I am? Asking for a friend.
I also liked the clue for BUTT DIAL. Because I’m all elegant and classy, I usually say pocket dial. I pocket-dialed Shauna P. once while driving, and she was able to appreciate that I do indeed sound just like Janis Joplin when I sing Me and Bobby McGee.
Speaking of mistakes made while sitting down. . . a spectacular sitting mistake would be to plop down on that OLD GAG, the whoopee cushion. My grandparents used to tell the story of how they got one when they first came out and hid it under a cushion at a Christmas party they threw. Said the snootiest lady chose to sit on it, but her thigh fortuitously covered the valve and prevented the air from escaping. It wasn’t until she crossed her legs a few minutes into a conversation that the device worked its magic. So it was sooooooo much more realistic.
To steal from Ben Franklin, BIG MACs are proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Ok – back to farts. I know in our culture, while many don’t find them funny, you have to admit that a great many of us do find them funny. Not so in other cultures. Back when I was teaching Japanese, I had this exchange with Yasushi, my TA:
Me: Ok, then. [bow deeply] Sai no onara.
Yashushi: Jaa mata. (“See you later”)
Me: Wait. Didn’t you hear me? I didn’t say “sayonara.” I said “sai no onara.” Get it? Most honorable rhinoceros fart! I made it up! It sounds just like “sayonara,” right?!
Yasushi: [pause, anemic laugh] Oh right. [another polite little laugh]
I liked the theme, it felt cute and good for a pre-Thursday puzzle. I wish they had dropped the “with our without the shaded square” bit and had a revealer. I sort of like it when the theme turns out to be more of an Easter egg than a “why don’t these four answers make any sense?” Sort of thing.
Rex got us all mewly a couple of months ago over his poor mauled snow-white kitty, rescued from a terrible fate. Now she is slowly turning into Satan’s glow-in-the-dark evil spawn. I can’t wait for the next chapter! She might levitate! (JK, Rex, I know she is still adorable.)
I loved this one and expected to come here to find a good review. I thought the theme was clever, especially (as Rex notes) the clues for the third and fourth ones. The fourth is Lewis-list worthy. And then I thought it was a bonus, not a problem, that the long downs were so good.
Rex, you don’t see the obvious theme? I wear my UNDEROOS for old time’s sake and they are so tight they make me BUTT DIAL my mommy, who responds with a JAW DROPPING voice mail that I should always wear clean new boxers in case I am in a car accident, not those ratty old kiddie briefs. How do mothers always know? I MEAN, COME ON!
Rex, I’ll email you my address for the check.
:-)
Is a BUTT DIAL anything like a Booty call?
I had TIRING instead of TAXING - which made a mess of that SW corner with the narrow entryway (no clue who the Trojan AJAX is didn’t help), so I made a real mess of a Wednesday. I got LOKI crossing LISA only because of CrossWorld - I’ve yet to watch an episode of that cartoon show.
Anyone else think of THIS when answering 51A?
You want to know what’s wrong with this country? It’s all that retorting going on at our playgrounds.
Did you know ESSO had a sister company called ENCO? Really. How come we never see that in puzzles?
Interesting theme. Grid gets a little name-happy in places e.g. AJAX crossing ARLO and JOEL, MAISEL crossing BERT and ELSA.
Liked IDLE crossing PLAY. Did not like ALOU crossing ALOE.
I do think it would be jaw dropping to face butt dial someone in your underoos. The person on the other line would most certainly be like "I mean come on!".
Primo puzzle to me is where after getting the first theme answer, the theme is obvious, so each ensuing theme answer becomes a riddle to crack. Suddenly the grid becomes a playground to my brain, which tries to get the remaining theme answers with as few crosses as possible, and goes “Whee!” during the cracking and “Aha!” when the answer comes, and the experience becomes one of those where daddy never takes the T-bird away.
After all this fun, my inner nerd noticed the trochaic O-train set of answers: ARLO / LEO / DOJO / ALPO / ESSO / AFRO / CELLO / JELLO, plus wannabes ALOE and SOSO. It also found an astounding number of answers – almost half – aside from the theme answers, where if you removed the first letter, what remained was an answer that has been in the NYT puzzle. Answers such as DREAM, which becomes REAM. I won’t go over the details, because, trust me, your eyes would glaze over. Sometimes my inner nerd is akin to @Rex's con artist cat.
So, Chase, you satisfied my dad-blasted nerdity and more than met my hopes for puzzle fun. Thank you, sir, for a rich, rich, puzzle experience today!
Haha, cats. They don’t care about your sleep. Anyhoo, totally agree on the puzzle, I was perplexed by Grapes as well and Ace card did not sound like a thing. The fun downs redeemed the old fashioned fill for me, I wholly enjoyed. Good luck with your sleep.
I come for the crossword commentary, but I stay for the cat news.
Hey Rex, if your cat’s middle-of-the-night yowlies happen a lot, check with your vet. It could be a sign of a thyroid problem.
Yes. Immediately.
@jberg here. Like Lewis, I enjoyed trying to guess the last three theme answers. Got EMOTIONS from the E, the others took 2 letters. But the funniest part was learning that there was a special word for hiccuping in a continuous stream. That one really held me up; took a swig of GOAT MILK to set me straight.
I got Rex’s thank-you postcard with the puzzle on it yesterday. Beautiful card, nice puzzle—but USPS had managed to print wavy black lines over the clues for the top 2 rows. I solved it anyway, with a new appreciation for those of you who solve down-clues only.
FWIW I couldn't find ace card on Google. I had thought I heard it before. But perhaps I was melding in my mind playing YOUR ace card and playing THE race card, as DeSantis was recently accused of doing.
Liked the theme anyway. (To self Kim milk is not a thing) Thought the puzzle was very easy.
Finished it without enjoying it. I agree that ACECARD is awkward.
The drop-a-letter thing was quasi-cute, but I was crestfallen that GFEP didn’t rise to the level of, say, COFEVE…
Oops, I didn’t mean to plagiarize LMS — sometimes I’m in a rush to post and then go back and read earlier comments. Bad habit!
I mean, come on, Rex, I butt-dialed you because after I sat down I thought it was a jaw-dropping moment that anyone could come up with underoos in a crossword puzzle.
Our cat used to get wake us up during the night with all kinds of noisy mischief to get us out of bed. Once we were moving, he'd run to his dish to ask us for some more food. We eventually got an automatic feeder to dole out a little midnight snack and it hasn't been an issue since!
I liked the long answers: I mean, come on! And my cat also likes to howl in the middle of the night for no reason. It's a loud, low cry that he never makes any other time -- very existential. 🙄
I was predisposed to like this puzzle because of (G)OAT MILK. You see, my husband uses OAT MILK all the time and always calls it GOAT MILK. There’s no explanation for why. But encountering that familiar, comfy domestic joke made me smile right at the beginning of my solve, and kept me smiling throughout. I agree with Rex that ACE CARD is a little wonky, but I’m prepared to accept it in an otherwise worthy Wednesday.
Certainly had no trouble in the NW. 1A must have been a gimme for everyone and even I, sports ignoramus, know something about the ALOU brothers, but yeah, from crosswords, not from baseball. SET-TO went right in, an expression of my mother’s, so maybe Rex is right in thinking it’s from another era. I made the TirING mistake at 46D, but fortunately I knew AJAX (as both Greek hero and foaming cleanser – thanks, @OffTheGrid, 7:06!), so that got corrected right away. But before it did, I had Garfield as spokescat for “iams,” the other 4-letter pet food brand resident in xwords. (Hmm, I wonder what Ida is spokescat for? Maybe just herself.) I’m so proud I know SEATAC now – it just slips right in. In fact, there was a slew of things here that “I’VE LEARNED FROM CROSSWORDS.” In addition to Moises ALOU and SEATAC – ACL, DOJO, REI, INRE, RILL and Mrs. MAISEL (wasn’t she here just recently?).
There was a tremendous lot of names; I count 15 people, both real and imagined: Moises ALOU, Mrs. MAISEL, LISA Simpson, ENYA, Bill WALTON, Doctor WHO, AJAX, ARLO Guthrie, JOEL Coen, GIL Grissom, NIA Vardalos, ALI Wong, LOKI, BERT and Princess ELSA. Actually 17, if you count Sheryl Sandberg in the clue for 64A and Yves Saint-Laurent for YSL. But I suspect most of them were in most of our wheelhouses, partly from doing crosswords and partly from living in the world. There were only three mysteries for me and they were easily solved through crosses, Ms. Sandberg’s book, WALTON and GIL.
[SB: yd, 0. These were my last two words. The shorter is a word I love and the longer I’d already found part of as a separate entry, so I would have been mad at myself had I missed either one.]
Now I am seriously going to be thinking about an ARLO and ENYA duet all day.
Hey All !
Hows about for a Theme:
Things That Happen With Your Ass - since we know the NYT crossword loves using ASS any chance they get! Themers clues:
Call a friend an ass? - BUTT DIAL
Opposite reaction to a moon? - JAW DROPPING
Twenty-somethings who wear skirts so short that their cheeks are on display for the world to see? - I MEAN, COME ON
They cover your ass - UNDEROOS
Neat theme. Nice when something about the English language is pointed out that seems obvious in hindsight, but you never thought about it until it is in fact pointed out.
Not sure if I ever had UNDEROOS when I was a wee tyke. I'm guessing no, I might have had a generic version. It's not where my nickname came from, though. Har.
A shaded F today. Nice.
Who thought GIL was GUS first? *Raises hand*
"Hey, hey, guess what day it will s?" 😁
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Re cats, not the puzzle. I quote my daughter: "I thank God every day that cats do not have opposable thumbs."
I for one am sick and tired of “Playground Retorts”. Am so, ARENOT, did too, blah blah blah- they’re like Kealoas, but for twelve similarly named volcanos.
Uniclues:
1. The final rounds of a pasta-eating contest.
2. The funnest and wildest day on the Tokyo money markets.
3. Product placement on clothing taken too far.
4. Comment made under your breath when your grandmother dyes her hair purple and frizzes it.
5. What to play (using your expression) when you want to eat Mexican and your partner insists on Chinese.
6. Exhortation to play sick so you can take a day off school.
7. How a certain Norse god is able to pull it off without getting caught.
8. Like a certain boxer’s peak performances.
9. How much to use of a special ingredient to make your water defense particularly effective.
1. ROTINI PLAYOFFS
2. MAD YEN ORGY
3. BIG MAC UNDEROOS
4. “I SEE AWFUL AFRO.”
5. FAJITA FACE CARD
6. “I MEAN COME ON – AIL!”
7. LOKI FLEES, SPRY
8. ALI-JAWDROPPING
9. MOAT-JELLO: A TAD
RHODE Island is indeed an island. It’s referred to as Aquidneck Island these days. The official title for the state (until very recently) was Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
@TheJoker
Butt dial/booty call combo appeared in a puzzle a while ago.
I roared then and I roar now.
It’s great no matter which is the clue and which is the answer.
Rex pointed out the hackneyed, awful fill in the top left, but what about the bottom right? AFRO, ORCS, ESSO, SOSO. REI, YSL … The three sports arcana answers, ALOU, WALTON, CAL, also indicate the limits of this puzzle’s construction. Hey, there’s NIA and ARLO and ALI and LOKI too! Round up the usual suspects. And ever notice that EMOTIONS are “raised in court”? As opposed to elsewhere. Not … good.
A pleasant solve with an interesting theme.
It's the BIG MAC of Lonely NYTXW Editors Tee-Hees. Drumroll. O-R-G-Y, B-U-T-T and, wait for it, N*U~D^E. To get your puzzle in the Times you first must dazzle a slush pile editor and xi is obsessed with squeezing tweenie giggles into the Gray Lady. Nice work today you Titan of Titillation, you Guru of Gawd, you Master of... uh, well, you know.... the pathway to eternal crossword glory is through xi's crotch using "soft"ware and battery powered "hard"ware.
It's not a theme 🦖, but I MEAN COME ON it's a limerick:
FAJITA FACECARD is as fierce as her JELLO
Inside her DOJO she has her CELLO and ALOE
She brings in AJAX
for a JAW-DROPPING BUTT wax
but he FLEES the FARCE the fearful soft fellow
Uniclues:
1 That room in her basement with a Mac laptop.
2 Favorite time of year at the Pasta Bowl.
3 Accidentally calling the Internal Revenue Service.
4 Mohammed doing what Mohammed does.
5 That moment every spring in the Olympia state when the sun pokes its head out and all the employees go outside to make sure it's true.
6 QVC.
7 What to wear on a third date with an unhealthy person.
8 Judg-y comment from one on guard against co-opting cultural hairstyles.
9 Ice queen gasses up the snowmobile.
1 ENYA DOJO (~)
2 ROTINI PLAYOFFS
3 TAXING BUTTDIAL (~)
4 ALI JAW DROPPING
5 SEA-TAC IDLES
6 MAD YEN ORGY
7 BIG MAC UNDEROOS
8 "I SEE AWFUL AFROS"
9 ELSA DOSES ESSO
@Barbara S. - My further-off-but-defensible first guess for Garfield's ads was 'ragu'.
Also, my wife and I never refer to 'yoga' around the house. We always call it 'yoghurt', for no obvious reason.
Rhode Island was named for the Isle of Rhodes. It's surrounded on three sides by Connecticut and Massachusetts, so it cannot be an island.
Lucky Rex. At least his cat wants something when he's doing some late night yowling. Our guy's reasons are totally unknown, except that he's really old.
Fart joke (thanks to @LMS for the opening). Queen Elizabeth is riding in a an open carriage with an African president when one of the horses touches off a thunderous blast. She is mortified and apologizes profusely. The president says No need to apologize, Your Highness. I actually thought it was the horse.".
Thought this was a nice theme with a cool observation about the missing letter, but agree that ACECARD doesn't quite measure up. Hand up for the TIRING TAXING dilemma but that didn't last long, as I couldn't think of a Trojan war hero named AJAR.
Nice Wednesdecito, CD. Thought your theme was a Clever Discovery, and thanks for all the fun.
Really clever, really original, and really well-executed. It's not so easy to come up with good ideas that have never been done before. Trust me -- it's not. You may have what you hope is a brilliant new version of a puzzle category that's already been used in varying ways, but I'm not aware of any puzzle with this conceit.
I'm wondering if there was a moment of inspiration here. Like maybe Chase is in the home of a health-conscious friend who says: "I'm sorry. I don't have regular milk, I only have--" and he mumbles something as he faces the refrigerator with his back to Chase and Chase says: "Did you say OAT MILK or GOAT MILK?" and thus a puzzle idea is born. Enough speculating: I'll go read the Constructor's Notes and see if he tells me.
A very enjoyable puzzle that I really liked!
Thx, Chase; your puz was ACEs! :)
Easy-med.
Smooth solve. Pretty much on my wavelength.
Side-eye for ACE CARD.
Bill WALTON: one of my all-time faves.
Listened to ENYA's 'Marble Halls' as I drifted off to sleep last nite.
Enjoyable adventure! :)
___
@pablo
30 mins into Anna's New Yorker without a single answer I'm 100% confident with. Today's challenge, for sure! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
GFEP? Clearly what our terrorist cat says at that vexing hour Rex knows so well. At least his feline prankster is short haired, so he doesn’t have to spend time cleaning any chair in the house before he sits to BUTT DIAL. Cats are to pets as sailboats are to recreational purchases: beautiful things to look at as they sit passively draining cash from your bank account. It like today’s grid cats are cute little things to play with when you can’t sleep. I’m happy to just have a Wednesday puzzle that has more than a fill-in-the-blanks component which today’s certainly did. Chases’s grid can be dismissed as SO SO by OFL, but I MEAN COME ON it’s just midweek folks.
Although I appear to be fully clothed, I’m NUDE UNDEROOS.
To anyone trying to win Rex’s $20, may the FARCE be with you.
Yul Brynner was known for not caring how he came across to others. Hence his moniker, the King of ASIAM.
I liked this puzzle. To take it to the “superb” level, the constructor has nothing to do BUTTDIAL it in a little more.
Thanks for a fun one, Chase Dittrich.
You are being tested. White Kitty is conducting experiments to determine what she can get away with. Last night's results look very promising.
Continued acquiescence to White Kitty's ploys will cement her control over your household. I mean, come on. Do you need a nude Greek statue of Ajax to fall on your head?
Right now White Kitty is off imbibing a glass of Chardonnay to celebrate. She left some goat milk in the bowl on the floor for you.
@Barbara S -- Your uniclues today are especially funny and my faves are 1,4,6 and 9. I'm sure 3 would also be one of my faves if I had the slightest idea what UNDEROOS are. I had no idea when I was doing the puzzle and I meant to look it up, but forgot. I will now.
PS -- I did look up the Constructor's Notes and I was right: OAT MILK/GOAT MILK was the seed entry -- though not with the back story I created in my mind.
@Anonymous 9:46 AM
I resemble this remark. I accidentally joined the Anonym-oti today by clearing cache and cookies yesterday thanks to a lovely GoDaddy tech helping me problem solve SSL certificates.
@RP: har. yep. Basic catowner trainin camp is definitely underway. Looks like IdaCat now has the "come" command workin pretty well for her.
Anyhoo, there was this puz dealie, also …
M&A extra themer: {Prominent US Olympic basketballer … with or without the first letter} = ?*
staff weeject picks: AIL & ALI. Nice anagrammers.
some M&A faves: JELLO/FAJITA. BUTTDIAL. IMEANCOMEON.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Dittrich dude. Neat theme idea.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
p.s.
* = (T)ALLAMERICAN.
**gruntz**
@Joe D (10:31) -- Hilarious!
@pabloinnh (10:10). Come on down to this corner of the playground. I've got a piece of cake for you.
Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Yum. Used to sing that backwards, just to amuse myself. ATAD got defined for me when I couldn't find a box of patties in the freezer after the McDonald's manager told me they were "a tad" left of the fries. He thought I was taking too long to find them, joined me in the freezer, and when I was clearly looking in the wrong place explained that the only thing thinner than a tad is a @!^* hair. IMEANCOMEON. Oh the memories. Enjoyed this one a lot, thought the theme was clever, and the long downs entertaining.
Finished with no issues and liked the puzzle overall but agree with Rex there is a BIG level of crosswordese and a generous helping of proper trivia as well. BUTT DIAL and UNDEROOS offsetting each other had kind of an ironic elegance and ORGY crossing OODLES was an interesting combo.
Still I came away with just a SO SO feeling about the theme. G/OAT MILK and E/MOTIONS worked but P/LAYOFFS seemed forced (Do “teams” really get laid off?) and F/ACE CARD even more. I MEAN COME ON, has anyone ever actually referred to it that way? “I just need an Ace Card/King Card/Queen Card/Jack Card to finish this royal flush.” I don’t know, I’m not much of a gambler but I doubt it.
Took me a while to understand the clue for LAGS before I finally got it was the TV hiccups. I really really loathe streaming and curse the day it was ever invented. Sadly my CBS channel recently went to that exclusively for my Chiefs football games and I can’t record them on my DVR now - a GAG that’s already getting OLD.
Good comments today.
Easy-medium for me too. No real problems with this one. Cute theme (which I liked more than @ Rex did), but I agree with @Rex that the long downs were the high points of the puzzle.
@bocamp - congrats on the Croce finish. The South American clue also threw me off.
The difference between a good constructor and a great constructor is that the great constructor (like PB) would rework the puzzle until the four letters would spell something relevant to the puzzle. I like puzzles that are not perfect, so I liked this one. And I am amused at those who are miffed about GFEP. Perhaps it was meant to be an abbreviation. Good Felines Eat Prey. Nah.
Well AHA... I thought this was clever!
I paused at GOAT MILK. As long as it's in my cheese, I'll eat it. I'm not sure I'd drink it. OAT MILK sometimes goes in my coffee but my favorite go to is Hazelnut Delight. Could AZEL NUT be sitting with GFEP?
My second pause was wondering who or why someone with an IQ of 159 is important. So this IQ conundrum took me back to when I was deemed an idiot. You see, when I first came to live in this USofA, my English wasn't quite up to par. My grandmother (Nana) use to laughingly call me her little heathen imp. According to her (many years later) she said it was because I was a nonbeliever of English.
I was...and so my sad tale began. I seemed to fail off the wagon when it came to conjugating verbs and, well, anything grammar. My spelling and usage made no sense to anyone but me. So my Mother and Nana would fret and fret and fret. The school counselor said all that would be solved and taken care of if I'd submit to an IQ test. No one told me what that meant. I didn't even know what submit meant.
I took the test and I flunked. They gave it to me again, and again I flunked. I think I was rated in the imbecile category. Imagine that!. My genius brother suggested they give me something in Spanish. They did....I wasn't an imbecile after all. I was told my IQ points went up by about 50 or so. I didn't care....Mom was happy, Nana was happy and my brother stopped calling me a moron.
So I wondered again about this LISA person with an IQ of 159. It took me longer to open a can of tuna than it did trying to wonder who LISA Simpson was and why I should care. I did (finally) laugh when it was LISA from the Simpsons....Good one...just like some GOAT MILK.
Anyway, that's my story. And that's the truth!
I really enjoyed the puzzle, and OFL's cat tales too. I am grateful enough to @Rex to send him a little money every year (thanks for the card, bro!) and I bet many of us have vowed that our Muse would take his job, we would double our contributions, just to show how much we appreciate her. And maybe she could find a less stressful job -- though our gain would be, I think, a severe loss to her students.
I personally hate OAT MILK and think GOAT MILK should be used only for tangy cheese. OAT meal, however, is well worth the time it takes to make it right.
I didn't mind ACE CARD. It may not be idiomatic, but it is a thing. My quiblet was with PLAYOFFS/LAYOFFS. The first is designed to eliminate teams. The second is not, and indeed when a corporate team is eliminated, many, and sometimes all, of the team members stay employed in another capacity.
Earlier, An Anon mentioned automatic food dispensers. They are great. I bought one when my new cat would eat all his food at once and than pester me at 5 AM. Other cats I've had only ate when hungry so I could just have food out all the time. Mine is made by "Petsafe". It's a 5 compartment rotating tray with a cover with an opening the size of a compartment. You can set times for it to rotate. It's easy to use and reliable. Batteries (4 D cells) last a long time, too.
Easy-medium for me, too, and fun to solve. EMOTIONS running high in court brought back memories of old Perry Mason shows where Hamilton Burger would become apoplectic at one of Perry's "incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial" legal moves. I also thought the "matching" long Downs were great, JAW-DROPPING and I MEAN COME ON, BUTT DIAL and UNDEROOS. A fine DOSE of wit on a Wednesday.
I'm allergic to cats but fortunately I can eat up stories about them. Yes, it looks like Ida, having gotten used to being cosseted, is now pushing the envelope. Where will it end?
@kitshef, I also live in a "yogurt" household.
I asked ChatGPT to formulate a theme with the 4 answers Rex would pay $20 for, but it failed, although it got me to create a theme that the bit agreed would work:
"What a kid might say and feel when getting dressed and accidentally sitting on a phone."
@Gary Jugert, Thank goodness. I worried we were heading toward uniclue playoffs but you and @Barbara S get that territory.
What? You taught Japanese? You're more and more amazing as we go on 😃
I enjoyed the theme just as it is, but agree if the circled letters spelled something that would be awesome!
I think I previously told my best BUTT DIAL story: I came home to a VERY long message on my answering machine, which consisted of car noises and occasional dialogue between my brother and his girlfriend about the hike they'd just finished. So I called him and asked how their hike went, and where they saw the bear. He was pretty gobsmacked.
[Spelling Bee: yd -2, missed these. Shoulda got the short one, but the long one only sounds vaguely familiar.]
My version of Rex's GRAPE difficulty was in the NE when I kept thinking “Quaff? Quaff?”, looking at ___IBE and coming up blank (or worse, scrIBE?) Luckily , it eventually filled in on its own.
And maybe Garfield was a spokesperson of oreO? That one didn’t take as long to figure out.
Nice theme, thanks Chase!
Having needer heard of "lags" as streaming hiccups I googled it and found oevidence it is a real word with that meaning.
????
Oh, problems with streaming.
Well I was slow with a lot of this puzzle.
But I did enjoy the themers once I got goat/oat milk and knew what to look for
p.s.
@RP: M&A proposes a "Clues By the Numbers" theme:
* {Wrong number cause} = BUTTDIAL.
* {Like a total mind number} = JAWDROPPING.
* {This here theme is a bunch of number 2!"} = IMEANCOMEON.
* {Skivvies with any number of superhero themes} = UNDEROOS.
QED.
Buy the Numbers for 20.
Bye bye,
M&A
Cat exorcism is a thing
Slightly off-topic: Has anyone completed the Language Lab cryptic from the WSJ that was floating around the discussion on Sunday? I have about 80% of the grid filled in, am pretty sure of some answers I haven't filled in, and have a sense of what all the component elements are, but it isn't falling into place as a whole. I feel like maybe the instructions are wanting.
I think @Nancy, @Birchbark and possibly @Kitshef were working on it? No spoilers please, I'm just curious if anyone's solved it. Tx.
@Masked and Anonymous 2:23 PM
[#1 dude slayin' them ampersand thingies.] M&A. (And, OHO! A staff weeject t'boot.)
Okay, I'll ask. How do you MILK an OAT? When I was a kid (heh-heh), some neighbors had GOATs and I've witnessed GOAT MILKing. (I could never do it because GOATs stink like yous wouldn't believe.) But I've yet to see anyone MILK an OAT.
I've been playing all sorts of card games going back to the days when my neighbors had GOATs but I've never seen or heard ACE and CARD used together. Definitely has an ad hoc, made just for this crossword puzzle and we will never see it again feel to me.
I'm trying to imagine how Venn Diagram circles for PLAYOFFS and LAYOFFS could overlap. I think they ARE NOT even close.
BUTT DIAL, JAW DROPPING and I MEAN COME ON were first rate but the theme and remaining fill, though not AWFUL, conspired to put this one in the SO SO category for me.
Oh my goodness. @Rex is for sure a “cat guy.” At my house, (home to two beauties until we lost my sweet avatar cat last year) the saying after taking actions that others might think is beyond the pale for animals “that take care of themselves” is “I don’t cater to cats.” Of course not. If we are fortunate, they communicate their needs and we meet them.
In return, we get the surprise snuggles with our friend who, while we were in the bathroom late at night hopped into the warm space we left, and upon our return is sound asleep therein and has become an immovable object. We coil around the purring lump and (at least in my case) enjoy the warmth and fall back asleep to the the gentle sounds that I cal “F Noise.” Some may prefer the white noise machine. I’ll take the gentle rumblings emanating from my “Tabico,” Pip. Her breed is Shelter, and her roots are clearly tabby, tortoise and calico. She even loves to have her fluffy white belly rubbed, proof of her calico-ness.
Enough about cats. Well, not really enough, but down to business. The theme was another constructor’s delight. It’s most interesting element to me was that all the theme clues had an identical instruction: with ir without the shaded letter. Sure, a weakness here and there”ACE CARD being the strongest example, but there was so much to love as @Rex pointed out. I look forward to seeing the theme puzzle clues from the group OFL set out above.
My one and only hangup was I MEAN really i stead of COME ON. FACE CARD, WALTON, DREAM, and GREECE fixed it quickly. Full on kudos to Chase! This was enjoyable, fun, a clever concept and impressive.
@Joe Dipinto-
Yes, I solved the Language Lab puzzle. Full disclosure, I grew up on cryptics and solved many before I ever did a US-style crossword, so I may have had an advantage.
Monday easy here. SEATEC and UNDEROOS were slow recall or unknown
What TexMex dish took some crosses.
I was going to go with Like Frazier's favorite punch as the Uniclue for ALI JAW DROPPING.
Adam in Eden says:
Well, there are only two of us here and one is I, MADAM.
When DuChamp was told his sculptures were junk and nothing more, he said:
To you my only reply is my FART.
And yes if a guy sits down late at night and BUTTDIALS a girl it might well become a BOOTY CALL. But can you clue it that way?
Factually Actually
The Dred Scott case was LAWFULLY decided.
@Joe DiPinto (3:52) re "Language Lab" cryptic -- I'm about half-way through it, with a blurry sense of the revealer (enough dark squares solved to grasp the gist, anyway), and virtually certain I know at least one of the twelve "change" answers and several others partially.
This is another way of saying I've been staring for a long time at the slippery cliff face of a cliff without a clear idea of where to go next. But I'll keep coming back to it --
And hats off to you, @kitshef (5:47) --
I tried to post early today, but the "Leave Your Comment" box froze up on me. It's a shame, because I was hoping to have my post appear overROO'S, but now it is, along with many others, UNDER ROO'S (hello @RooMonster).
According to the "official stats," i was one second shy of my fastest Wednesday today.
BUTTDIAL - I MEAN COME ON - JAWDROPPING - UNDEROOS
4D: The cause of an 8D outburst, maybe
8D: Interpretation of a mime's depiction of 25D
25D: Discovery of your spouse's secret obsession with 41D
41D: Clothing choice that complicates the ability to 4D
@Joe D, @Kitshef, @Birchbark and @mathgent -- I am not worthy of being included in the LANGUAGE LAB cryptic discussion. I am completely UNworthy, in fact. The puzzle was a disaster for me.
P.S. The answer is "yes", @kitshef. Go look at your email!
Thanks, @Kitshef, @Birchbark and @Nancy, for your responses. I stared at it some more and got it finished. I take issue with the grid answer at 23d, though, which seems inaccurate. (I assume it's the answer; two letters are unchecked.) But otherwise it was good, very similar to the Harper's Magazine cryptics.
Chardonnay is a perfectly legit clue for GRAPE. As would be Pinot, Riesling, or Cabernet Sauvignon. These are all GRAPE varieties from which their correspondingly named wines are made.
NOT SO NUDE
Is an ORGY A DREAM,
IMEAN TO someone WHO's
NOT AS BIG, SO it seems,
ON DROPPING their UNDEROOS?
--- BERT & LISA WALTON
Yessir, I know me whut an ACECARD is. It's that little membership card you get when you shop at Ace Hardware, where you can get deals and such. Y'all kin put it on yer keyring to yer pickup.
In the casino, however, ACECARD is nonsense. I'm afraid that dog won't hunt. The theme is thin anyway, so that part is bogey. Fill, as OFF said, contrasts spectacular long downs with a pile of short claptrap; not the ideal scenario. Let's just go with bogey.
Wordle birdie.
The theme was a bit thin, doncha think? Could have made the darkened letter useful both across and down - that would be more of a feat. Yet...I remain in awe of anyone who can construct a puzzle!!!
GOATS, LAMBS, FAJITAS, GREECE - I'm hungry. And I need to make a return to ACE.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
@spacey - good one. I used to have one of them thar ACECARDS.
Time to IMBIBE.
Wordle par.
@ Burma Shave - Brilliant - I believe you even outdid yourself today.
IMHO - Good puzzle. No PC stuff. Theme ok with me. Congrats Constructor.
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